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aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
I know it's a very demanding task for any computer to do, but all I heard leading up to my purchase was that these computers stay cool and quiet under heavy workloads.
They are stay cool and quiet under heavy ViDEO / COMPOSiTiNG / GRAPHiC / 2D ANiMATiON workloads compare to other devices :) For 3D MBP's could be hot and loud which is normal I guess.
 
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aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
Another quick data. Maybe it will be useful for anyone. It is not for comparing AS with PC's. They are all have their own issues :) I still quite sure to use AS for 3D workflows. I do not want to start another PC v.s. Mac endless topic. They are what they are. Anyone could choose any of them or both of them. It depends on your workloads and budget.

C4d_CYBRPNK_AS_PC_22-04-2023.png


You could see AS main peak is using higher block size while rendering. I believe if it is not restricted with 512 block size by Redshift, base spec Ultra could reach 3080 or even 3080 Ti level for single frame rendering time and it will be great. I hope but not expect these function :) maybe next Redshift release ( in a couple of days I guess ) it could be.
Any one could download these project files from Maxon Training channel and could make their own experiments.
 

LymeChips

macrumors newbie
Jan 3, 2020
27
16
No 16 inch not quite under heavy workloads. You could hear fan noise very clear & loud. Also 16 inch is reaches maximum degrees quicker than 14 inch MBP's.
Can you explain why the 16 reaches max temp before 14 inch?
 

aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
Can you explain why the 16 reaches max temp before 14 inch?
I believe it is related with number of cores ( GPU ) and how much data will processed constantly, like a 4 minutes single frame render v.s. 1 minute single frame render.
It is not a big issue for video editing data. Any M1 or M2 could handle video easily. Even for video during long exports fans are working constantly. I can compare M1 16 inch MBP with base model Studio max because we use them everyday. Studio is slightly faster and way silent than 16 inch MBP during video editing/exporting.
14 inch have less CPU/GPU cores and power restricted by Apple as far as I know. But 16 inch could use more power which means it will produce more heat. No matter it has got better cooling options as Leman said ''It's all about thermal output vs. cooling capability. Under prolonged heavy combined load an M1 Max will produce the same amount of heat as a previous Intel i9+dGPU MBP.''
If you feed heavy workloads to 16 inch it will reach fan threshold quicker and will keep working because it has got more room for data processing.
If you use only CPU renderers like Arnold it will reach the fan threshold later than GPU renderers. If you use GPU for look dev which means constantly using GPU cores for hours sometimes, this will kick fans at a point and they keep working during all process. M2 has got more GPU cores which are slightly overclocked and will reach fan level earlier I guess.
 
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LymeChips

macrumors newbie
Jan 3, 2020
27
16
Both the 14 & 16in MBP can have up to 38 GPU cores with the M2 Max. The 16in does have high power mode and from what I can tell that is just a more aggressive fan curve to try and stave off throttling the SoC, so I would think it would reach max temp later, but audibly the 16in in high power mode might get louder faster. 🤷

Maybe I'm more of a desktop person... Either way I don't think this laptop will be a regular part of my 3d workflow. Later chip designs might offer a more worthy desktop replacement, but as a 3D artist I should have known that notion would be a bit naive.
 
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Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,899
2,141
Tokyo, Japan
On Studio Ultra I have no issues while working on 3D or overnight 3D rendering sessions. It is the most reliable device I ever used. There is no fan noise but still it could be warm on the chassis which is perfectly normal.

Hi Aytan,

how quiet/audible would you say the Studio is during normal 3D modelling sessions or Photoshop painting sessions with large (10Kx8K+) 16-bit canvasses? I'd love it if it was completely inaudible in a quiet room.

Which spec did you get? I'm considering getting one for my next purchase.
 

sirio76

macrumors 6502a
Mar 28, 2013
578
416
My Ultra is barely audible from 50cm after few hour of sustained rendering, the chassis get warm but the fan noise is never an issue here, I would say my breathing is louder.
 

aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
Hi Aytan,

how quiet/audible would you say the Studio is during normal 3D modelling sessions or Photoshop painting sessions with large (10Kx8K+) 16-bit canvasses? I'd love it if it was completely inaudible in a quiet room.

Which spec did you get? I'm considering getting one for my next purchase.
Hi,
I have base model M1 Ultra 20 Cores 64 GB RAM 48 GPU and 2TB SSD. I have been using this one since july 2022.
It is copmletely inaudible during ZBrush/C4D Modeling, Shading or Look Dev. You can not hear any fan noise while working with Photoshop/Illustrator or Corel Painter.
Even in all day long 3D rendering sessions it is inaudible. You can feel it is warm when you touch the M1 Studio chassis only during this 3D rendering sessions. Other wise it is cold and there is no fan noise.
Please do not buy M1 Max on Mac Studio, even 64 GB RAM with it is not enough for apps which uses multithread cores like ZBrush.
I have experienced both Max and Ultra. There is a lot difference on Photoshop and Corel Painter (for hi res files) and ZBrush/C4D Blender. If you use Corel Painter for Hi Res workflow don't even think to buy M1 Max Studio.
 
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Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,899
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Tokyo, Japan
That's great Sirio.
I know this is somewhat off topic, but how would you rate the Mac Studio Ultra for Photoshop work?

My current 2019 Intel MacBook Pro is just awful. Hot and slow, and often gets laggy where everything feels working in a vat of sticky tar.
Probably the worst Mac I've owned in 20 years. 🥲

I'm looking to gather some feedback on what would make a good next upgrade. For medium-heavy 3D work and very heavy Photoshop painting.
 

Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,899
2,141
Tokyo, Japan
Hi,
I have base model M1 Ultra 20 Cores 64 GB RAM 48 GPU and 2TB SSD. I have been using this one since july 2022.
It is copmletely inaudible during ZBrush/C4D Modeling, Shading or Look Dev. You can not hear any fan noise while working with Photoshop/Illustrator or Corel Painter.
Even in all day long 3D rendering sessions it is inaudible. You can feel it is warm when you touch the M1 Studio chassis only during this 3D rendering sessions. Other wise it is cold and there is no fan noise.
Please do not buy M1 Max on Mac Studio, even 64 GB RAM with it is not enough for apps which uses multithread cores like ZBrush.
I have experienced both Max and Ultra. There is a lot difference on Photoshop and Corel Painter (for hi res files) and ZBrush/C4D Blender. If you use Corel Painter for Hi Res workflow don't even think to buy M1 Max Studio.

Thanks Aytan, for this helpful post. While I'm not a Corel Painter user, what do you think is causing the difference between the Mac Studio Max and the Ultra version?

You mention 64GB of Ram not being enough. I've mostly found macOS being quite good at mitigating excessive Ram usage. Are you noticing any particular issues that destroy performance like say, Linux does. (Where running out of Ram just causes the entire system to freeze up for long intermittent periods). Does this only happen on the Max and not on the Ultra?
 

aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
That's great Sirio.
I know this is somewhat off topic, but how would you rate the Mac Studio Ultra for Photoshop work?

My current 2019 Intel MacBook Pro is just awful. Hot and slow, and often gets laggy where everything feels working in a vat of sticky tar.
Probably the worst Mac I've owned in 20 years. 🥲

I'm looking to gather some feedback on what would make a good next upgrade. For medium-heavy 3D work and very heavy Photoshop painting.
I am waiting M2 (hope for M3) version for upgrade my M1 Ultra. I could suggest to you wait for M2/M3 version if there is no emergency.
This is the Best device I ever use last 15 years including number of Macs and PC's.
Rendering on 3D is slow for now on M1 Ultra v.s. RTX 3000/4000 series. It is like 2 times slower against 3070 and 4 times slower against 4070.
İt is way better on Painting/Compositing and Video editing than PC's.
 

aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
Thanks Aytan, for this helpful post. While I'm not a Corel Painter user, what do you think is causing the difference between the Mac Studio Max and the Ultra version?

You mention 64GB of Ram not being enough. I've mostly found macOS being quite good at mitigating excessive Ram usage. Are you noticing any particular issues that destroy performance like say, Linux does. (Where running out of Ram just causes the entire system to freeze up for long intermittent periods). Does this only happen on the Max and not on the Ultra?
While painting ( if you use any wacom product Intuos pro or Cintiq) response while turning the canvas and zoom in/out is not ok with M1 Max. It is painfull. On M1 Ultra it is so smooth.
First of all 32 GB Ram on M1 max is not enough ( I use both 32 GB and 64 GB versions of M1 Max). 32 GB is very hard to work with After Effects/Premier/DaVinci Resolve, You could have freezing and crashes while medium heavy 3D workflows.
64 GB M1 Max is ok for Video Editing/Compositing basic 3D but its not good for Medium/Heavy 3D workflows. Simply CPU cores are not enough.
64 GB M1 Ultra is ok for Video/Painting/Compositing/3D workflows, only fault is slow during 3D rendering.
I have only 1 or 2 crashes with M1 Ultra on 3D and that was my fault, because I have push the device using too much swap memory during 3D Simulation (It is completely shut down and restart if you exceed 300 GB RAM/Swap Memory usage). Otherwise M1 Ultra is ok.
 

Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,899
2,141
Tokyo, Japan
I am waiting M2 (hope for M3) version for upgrade my M1 Ultra. I could suggest to you wait for M2/M3 version if there is no emergency.
This is the Best device I ever use last 15 years including number of Macs and PC's.
Rendering on 3D is slow for now on M1 Ultra v.s. RTX 3000/4000 series. It is like 2 times slower against 3070 and 4 times slower against 4070.
İt is way better on Painting/Compositing and Video editing than PC's.
Yeah, no real urgency. I'll stick with the Intel MBP for a while yet.
According to Mark Gurman the Mac Studio will go straight to M3. Now wouldn't it be great if the M3 did indeed have hardware RayTracing support added. 🙂

And there is no way I'm switching back to PC's and have a nVidia branded blast furnace in my little office. So I'll put up with the performance hit.
 
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aytan

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2022
161
110
Yeah, no real urgency. I'll stick with the Intel MBP for a while yet.
According to Mark Gurman the Mac Studio will go straight to M3. Now wouldn't it be great if the M3 did indeed have hardware RayTracing support added. 🙂

And there is no way I'm switching back to PC's and have a nVidia branded blast furnace in my little office. So I'll put up with the performance hit.
I am using M1 Ultra and PC side by side right now. For 3D I use M1 Ultra for all modeling, animation, Look dev, Texturing and Painting. I use PC only for rendering out the 3D scenes. Both use same Redshift engine versions.
I have upgrade my PC last week from i7 12700/Z690 EVGA 3070 FTW3 to i7 13700K/Z790 Zotac 4070 AMP Airo and there is a lot difference regarding Heat and Noise with 3000 and 4000 series.
EVGA was really silent and keep itself cool during 3D rendering ( 45 - 56 degrees celcius ) but 4070 is totally different level regarding noise and heat. It is completely silent and won't go over 52 degrees during 5 hours 3D rendering session. Only very low noise I could hear was a fan which belongs to CPU cooling rig.
Things have change during all these years.
But I prefer to work on any Mac to any PC except rendering out 3D scenes.
Otherwise PC's are nightmare if you use windows on them.
 
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sirio76

macrumors 6502a
Mar 28, 2013
578
416
That's great Sirio.
I know this is somewhat off topic, but how would you rate the Mac Studio Ultra for Photoshop work?

My current 2019 Intel MacBook Pro is just awful. Hot and slow, and often gets laggy where everything feels working in a vat of sticky tar.
Probably the worst Mac I've owned in 20 years. 🥲

I'm looking to gather some feedback on what would make a good next upgrade. For medium-heavy 3D work and very heavy Photoshop painting.
I would recommend the Ultra version, IMO 64GB would be enough since RAM managements is very good, but to know for sure check the memory consumption on your actual machine, and if you don’t exceed regularly the 64GB limit you will be fine.
 

Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,899
2,141
Tokyo, Japan
Little news tidbit here... I was looking at some of the latest demos of EmberGen and got curious if they're actually planning on developing a macOS version. Turns out they are, albeit no release date, so might be a ways off yet.

"A few important milestones are coming up: EmberGen 1.0 - We'll be leaving beta within the next few months and this will ship with Linux support, new GPU particle tooling, better UI/UX, and more. EmberGen 2.0 - When this is out we'll have MacOS support as well as a fully rewritten simulator and renderer to support BILLIONS of voxels. We will likely have an early access version next year but no ETA on an official release as 2.0 is a major leap in technology for us. SceneryGen will likely have an early access version next year. LiquiGen still has no ETA, but we are hard at work on it's core tech."

Link:
 
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Xiao_Xi

macrumors 68000
Oct 27, 2021
1,627
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EmberGen 2.0 - When this is out we'll have MacOS support as well as a fully rewritten simulator and renderer to support BILLIONS of voxels.
It is the most requested feature.

Shall we add it to the wiki post?

P.S. Should we rename the wiki post?
 

Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,899
2,141
Tokyo, Japan
Perhaps you could add a new category. 'FX software'.
And for 'last update' you could add 'TBA' (To Be Announced) as for now it is only vaporware.
 
Last edited:

singhs.apps

macrumors 6502a
Oct 27, 2016
660
400
It is the most requested feature.

Shall we add it to the wiki post?

P.S. Should we rename the wiki post?
Rename and expand.

I would add 3D ‘specialist’ to the category.

The likes of Gaea, world builder , embergen, quixel mixer, Adobe substance suite, Marmoset etc could be entered in this new list.
 
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